Last orders: extreme unction for some great traditions

If you are under 50, there's a good chance you don't know any Catholic religious (nuns, brothers, priests in religious orders). If you're under 30 you've likely never seen one, especially as so few now wear habits or distinctive clothes. Today they are an endangered species, as a new survey of 161 Catholic orders shows.

I wrote about the report, See I Am Doing A New Thing, in a news article, which is followed today by a report on the implications for one of the biggest and most important orders, the Jesuits.

The Society for the Ransom of Captives of the Turks went out of business when the Turks stopped taking captives

Millions of Australians were partly or largely shaped by these men and women over the past two centuries. I acknowledge that for many, it was an experience they have cause to regret, whether they were abused or crushed or bullied. Others found them inspirational.

I believe the legacy is overwhelmingly positive: these nuns, brothers and priests provided education where none existed, ran hospitals, provided social welfare, tended to the distressed and to the poorest. As Jesuit Chris Middleton observed, the Jesuit schools (Xavier, Riverview, St Aloysius) were instrumental in creating a Catholic professional class in medicine, law, politics and media. This meant Catholics, long disdained, were able to take a full share in Australian life.

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Once the religious filled the teaching positions in their schools, nursing roles in their hospitals. Today these jobs are overwhelmingly done by lay professionals.

There are many reasons for the decline, some of which should be applauded – for example, the state taking responsibility for providing free, secular education and health and welfare services. Groups like the Josephite nuns and Christian Brothers have largely moved out of running schools as a result.

The social revolution of the ’60s was enormously influential. It brought the pill, the sexual revolution, feminism, civil rights of various sorts, affluence and more choices for people, plus a loss of trust in institutions of all sorts, the glorification of self, a reduced willingness to make such permanent commitments, and the emphasis on personal autonomy. Within the church, the great reforming Vatican II council changed everything: it brought engagement and openness to the world and, for the religious orders, a profound re-examination. Hundreds began leaving.

Although the report does not mention this, the celibate life has often been a haven for people uncomfortable with their sexuality and there is today far less stigma attached to homosexuality. That also means fewer vocations.

For those who are interested, here are some of the report’s figures. In 1966, the high-point of membership in the 161 religious orders in the survey, they had 19,413 members. Today the number is 8422, and the report predicts that in 10 years it will be 6000, less than a third. The median age today is 73. Many, many of those orders will be extinct – dozens now are down to their last few. Only 20 congregations have more than 100 members, while 75 of them have fewer than 25.

The report shows that 401 people joined the orders in Australia between 1997 and 2009, of whom a quarter did not stay. In all 483 resigned, and more than 2500 died. Some of the larger international orders are growing in other parts of the world and can bolster Australian numbers from overseas, but – as report co-author Noel Connolly told me – this brings a fresh set of challenges of its own.

Many of the orders are reinventing themselves. The biggest changes are the nature of the work they do: education occupied 60 per cent in 1946; today that figure is under 12 per cent. Many have rediscovered their prophetic origins, and are working at the outermost margins, such as the Josephites, and others boast top scholars in secular institutions, such as the Jesuits.

The nuns and brothers themselves naturally feel some pain and regret at their diminution, but they have seen it coming. As Noel Connolly, a Columban priest, said, they have been planning to involve laypeople more for a long time – this is not unexpected. “Religious today have been through a fair amount of questioning, and have a mature and tested hope.”

Most also recognise that most religious orders have a natural life span of 150 to 200 years, beyond which they have to reinvent themselves. As Jesuit historian Michael Head observes, “the Society for the Ransom of Captives of the Turks went out of business when the Turks stopped taking captives”.

The Jesuits’ Australian leader, Steve Curtin, finds what I consider a very bright side in his reflection, quoted in the report. “The sexual abuse of children and young people in the church over the last 50 years points to a serious problem in the way that power is exercised in the church. There is a problem of clericalism, there is a problem with priests, bishops and religious who cannot be made accountable by the people of God for the quality of the leadership that they exercise. We need to change canon law to change the way power is restricted in the church to clerics. We need to change clericalism and give laypeople positions of authority at the highest levels of the church. This calls for a change of mindset and changes in the church’s law. Perhaps that is what God is doing in the church at the moment.”

To which call for change, most of us would heartily say (depending on our religious orientation), “Amen” or “hear, hear”.

For myself, I have always had questions about the theology behind religious orders, yet admire the dedication and sacrifice of many who heard the call. Though I strongly agree with Curtin about the need to remove clericalism, I have to admit to a twinge of sadness about the orders’ decline. What do you think? What was your experience, if any, of the Catholic religious? Do you see any social costs to their decline? Will it help produce a maturer church?

116 comments so far

BZ,

As a protestant my interaction with catholic relious orders has been periphral only. Like you I do not understand the theology behind them but I do respect the work they have done / continue to do and their individual commitment to God.

In terms of your comment "We need to change canon law to change the way power is restricted in the church to clerics. We need to change clericalism and give laypeople positions of authority at the highest levels of the church."

I'm a Presbyterian and we elect our elders from the congregation with the minister being a 'teaching elder'. He only gets one vote the same as every other elder in recognition that spiritual maturity is not restrictied to formal theological training. We are the democracy of Christianity and while not prefect it seems to work very well.

Commenter

BigMac

Location

Sydney

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 4:38AM

Barney,

Good to see you back with a typically thoughtful article.

I grew up largely areligious, so I had virtually no contact at all with clerics until my late teens (when my mother took something of a late life interest in religion). I remember one ex-Jesuit in particular, who later trained to be a Jungian analyst, who was an interesting, if intense, person.

Perhaps because I have little experience with the institutions of the RCC (!), I am perhaps more sympathetic to the idea of clergy than most people seem to be these days. Every field of human endeavour will attract people with varying levels of commitment - I see clergy as people who are prepared to commit more to the religious life (I appreciate that, too, opens up a whole can of definitional worms, and also accept that motives to the religious life are invariably mixed).

I'm probably as obsessed by money, power and sex as anyone else, but I can't help thinking that those who take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are performing some kind of useful witness. Might not we benefit as a society to have people living a wide range of lives?

Commenter

mike88

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 5:47AM

I would like to see data on sexual assaults within the orders not on children, but on the priests, nuns etc. A friend of mine joined a seminary as a young man and was raped repeatedly before quitting. He is still a practising catholic, but it seemed like a good reason not to continue along the path he thought his god had chosen for him.

Commenter

adam ansell

Location

melbourne

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 6:38AM

Barney says: True, though once the elders are elected they run things. The session (elders' board) has the power in Presbyterian churches, and can only be over-ruled by the presbytery (representatives from all the sessions in a given area) rather than by the congregation. Congregationalists, such as the Baptists, are even more democratic (in theory). But I agree that the Presbyterian system can work extremely well.

Commenter

Barney Zwartz

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 7:04AM

Barney says: Thanks Mike. I should be clear that I am not opposed to priests in their role as priests. By clericalism I mean the rule of priests. Laypeople have been kept away from power (again, in theory, because there have been strong emperors etc) for 1000 years. They once helped elect bishops and popes. Not lately. Top level church officials recognise that laypeople have abilities, but they believe a man goes through an ontological change when he is ordained, and thus all decision-making is reserved to the ordained (the priest in the parish, the bishop in the diocese, the Vatican in the wider church).

Commenter

Barney Zwartz

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 7:09AM

Barney says: That's obviously an awful story. I don't the specifics of your friend's assaults, but surely that was a criminal matter requiring police involvement. That said, I can understand the dynamics that might make such a course difficult, but he might have spared other people the same experience.

Commenter

Barney Zwartz

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 7:14AM

What are your thoughts on the belgian trappist monks, specifically, the brewing ones (Orval, Westmalle, Chimay, etc)? Never let it be said that I say religion produces only evil! Those crazy Belgian fundies make a mighty fine brew. :-)

Commenter

zebba

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 7:17AM

Thanks, Barney for the clarification of your own views. I agree it is hard to credit that a priest, simply by virtue of being a priest, is inherently more competent in a range of secular areas. If the ontological change argument does suggest that, it is a nonsense. I thought the argument only applied to certain religious functions e.g. admibnistering the sacraments. I was not aware it had such general applicability.

Commenter

mike88

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 7:22AM

Barney says: No, you're right, it's not that it has general applicability. It's more subtle than that. I don't think any hierarchical Catholic ever really trusts a layperson quite the same way; they are outside the club.

Commenter

Barney Zwartz

Date and time

November 17, 2010, 7:29AM

Barney says: Ah Zebba, you have the advantage of me. I don't know these brewers or their brew. But I'd be happy to learn. Is any available in Melbourne?

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